


Five Times Rusty Got Birthday Kisses

by danvssomethingorother



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied Child Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 16:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danvssomethingorother/pseuds/danvssomethingorother
Summary: Snippets of Rusty's birthdays through the years and the many kisses he was given from friends, family and even lovers.





	Five Times Rusty Got Birthday Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> Today is Rusty's official Bday and I had to make this. Enjoy!

**Don**

 

It was always going to be their little secret.

Don pressed his finger playfully over his lips as he pulled Rusty with him, playfully pulling his blindfold down to not spoil the surprise to come.

Rusty never felt safer then when Don held his hand, he trusted him and knew he would never hurt him. He was the only person he would let him drag him blindly into anything without feeling afraid.

Jonas was away for the weekend, he had promised to throw a party for Rusty’s birthday when he got home but Rusty was more then happy to not see that promise go through. For once he would be fine with falling through the cracks of Jonas’s priorities and his father forgetting about him entirely.

“Watch your step, bud,” Don told him gently holding his shoulders tight and guiding him into an unfamiliar building after a short walk across the compound, his uncle holding him tight promising to not let him trip or fall while blind folded. 

“Are you ready?”

Rusty was already giggling, he couldn’t help, his uncle was the only one he felt he was allowed to be happy around. Who he was able to feel anything around without being punished.

Don gently untightened the blind fold letting it fall down, Rusty kept his eyes firmly shut not to ruin the surprise completely, bouncing on his heels in anticipation of whatever his uncle had in store for him.

He felt the surprise before he saw it, something touching against the bare skin of his arms, something tickling against his nose making his smile widen and continue to widen opening his eyes to a rainbow of wings fluttering around him.

Large swarms of butterflies swept around them like little whirlwinds of color, the glass ceiling above them almost making them glow. Rusty’s jaw dropped and he held out his arms excitedly watching the creatures land on him without a care, crawling across him while Don chuckled at his dumb struck look.

“I asked yer dad to get me one butterfly specimen months ago and the show off makes an entire habitat.”

Rusty sat down on the carpet of grass and looked skywards to butterflies nesting in the trees and flowers that surrounded them in the green house his father had never showed him. 

“The perfect place for a picnic for your special day.”

Rusty glanced up at his uncle and he didn’t know it was possible for him to smile this bright as he set up a blanket and food near them. The center piece of the blanket, that was slowly being swarmed by the bright colored creatures, was a flowery decorated cake with Rusty’s name written in cursive in the center. Don stuck a colorful number ten candle in the middle, gently ushering Rusty over to the cake, sitting him in frame of the camera Rusty hadn’t noticed he set up.

Rusty frowned at it but was put at ease by Don sitting down behind him and pulling close.

He whispered happy birthday into his ear and gave him a gentle peck on the temple as the flash of the camera went off.

 

**Johnny**

Rusty had been here so many times before, but he had never felt it so strongly as he did cramped in a little supply closet, holding his hand tight over his mouth to keep the sobbing at bay. To keep in anyone from finding him after that embarrassment.

He wanted to die. He wanted to stay dead. He couldn’t deal with this anymore, he just wanted to be with Don.

He was too cowardly to leave his hiding spot to attempt to do something to end his pain, he just stayed there, trapped in his own purgatory. Nothing was going to change. It was just an endless cycle of people abusing him. It didn’t matter if they were family or guild spies, they were all the same and they all wanted to keep pushing him over the edge.

He tensed as a bright light hit his face and someone stood there, looking in on his little hiding spot. He shoved himself as close to the wall as he could, cowering, shaking and sobbing harder now that he was found.

He was surprised the person just sat down next to him, nudging him hard with his shoulder until he looked up to find Johnny sitting uncomfortably close to him, offering out his flask he had seen him drinking heavily from at the party.

Rusty thought of all the reasons it would be a bad idea to get drunk, but he no longer held the will to care about how stupid it was. He yanked the flask from Johnny and began chugging, Johnny yanking it from him with a chuckle after a long gulped.

“It doesn’t get easier…”

That was the last thing Rusty wanted to hear but he knew Johnny wasn’t about to lie to him. 

“That shit your uncle pulled, yanking your pants down in front of everyone, that’s fucked up Rust.”

Rusty scowled at the older boy yanking the flask from his hand and downing it until there wasn’t any left for the older boy. Johnny didn’t seem to care shrugging it off letting Rusty slump against him and cry.

He felt Johnny shift, putting his arm around him, hugging him close.

He didn’t tell him it would be ok, he seemed to know it wasn’t and there wasn’t much point in lying to Rusty.

Rusty was feeling tipsy and stupid and just drunk enough to make some bad choices. He grabbed tight onto Johnny’s leather jacket and yanked him close to him, forcing him into a sloppy, drunk kiss.

Clumsily, he pulled himself into Johnny’s lap, Johnny holding him close and pulling their kiss deeper. Rusty felt his hand slipping into his swim suit and maybe he just wanted to feel something that wasn’t pain, he let him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t found himself eying Johnny before, he was easy on the eyes with his leather jacket and the way nothing bothered him.

When his father invited all those prostitutes to his son’s 16th birthday, Rusty half suspected it was to make a ‘man’ out of him, let him lose his virginity the easy way.

What a weird bit of petty vengeance on Rusty’s part to lose it instead to his father’s rival’s son in the broom closet.

 

**Pete**

Surprises, Rusty had found, were always bad things. The very last time a surprise was a good thing had been when Rusty was ten and Don was alive.

Yet, he allowed Pete to tighten his clammy, whiter then even his normal albino standard hand press tighter and tighter over his eyes. 

“Ya can’t make fun of me for caring.”

Rusty sighed loudly rolling his eyes hard, something not easy with his friend’s hands smashing into them.

“I won’t.” 

“Ya better not.”

“I’m not!” Rusty whined finally losing his patience, “Just show me the surprise.”

Rusty really didn’t need him to pull his hand away to know what said surprise was, he had smelled it when White nearly broke both their necks stumbling them into Rusty’s dorm after yanking him away from the library. It smelled liked burned brownies? Maybe cake? Whatever it was, Pete did not cook it right and it was going to lead to one of those, but it was the thought that counted arguments.

Pete finally yanked his clammy hands away showing Rusty his tackily decorated dorm room. A large, store bought banner falling off the wall read ‘Happy Birthday!’, Pete did a real half assed job putting it up to begin with and maybe four balloons floating around. Rusty raised an eyebrow towards Pete realizing they all read ‘It’s a boy!’.

“It was all the store had,” he grumbled folding his arms defensively.

“Are those pot brownies?”

Pete just began nervously chuckling at that, picking up the plate and shoving them in his friend’s face.

Rusty had begged him not to do anything for his birthday but he wasn’t about to pass down free drugs, even if they probably wouldn’t be as effective baked into burned pastries.

“Happy birthday, Rust,” Pete said pressing his lips against his friend’s lips, taking him by surprise for a second but he just smiled smugly as his friend whispered he was going to give him a special birthday present later.

Rusty just laughed placing another kiss on his friend’s lips, he was going to get high and laid, Pete was trying to give him his best birthday ever. Not like there was much completion to begin with in the parade of trauma Jonas usually gifted him. 

Turning nineteen wasn’t so bad.

 

**Brock**

As the years passed, people few and far between remembered his birthday and well Rusty was fine with that. Even the fondest memories had shades of cynicism coating them now. Despite how happy Don had always made him, he had died a tragically young death and Rusty’s final memory of him was something he would like to keep buried.

Johnny despite how he had kept Rusty content after a traumatic event turned into a disappointing relationship, he often sneered at just thinking about.

It was a closeted affair with Pete, neither wanting to quite admit there was something there, neither really wanting a relationship. So they had been tight lipped about their college days since Billy came in the picture. And with that level of secrecy put an end to the last person who had wanted to celebrate his birthday.

And well, Rusty was fine with that. He was thirty today, whatever, who cared. 

Turning his head over, after realizing he had once more fallen asleep in the lab after another all nighter, he sighed realizing someone cared.

Three someones specifically.

Two little boys who loved him and he thought the world of were currently eying him as he began to shake himself awake and yelling behind them to the bodyguard who might be a little something more.

“Daddy’s awake! Daddy’s awake!” they yelled in unison to the man leaning against the doorway trying to act like he didn’t care, he wasn’t fooling anyone with the way he kept his eyes on the Ventures.

“Good he’s not dead.”

Rusty found himself snickering, Brock would never let that happen. He knew in his heart the man would do anything to protect the three of them, something no one had wanted to do for Rusty since Don had passed.

“Can we get him the surprise??”

Hank was bouncing around, ready to pop if Brock didn’t let him get whatever the surprise was soon. 

“Get it before he passes out again.”

Both twins shot past Brock, who finally cracked a smile and Rusty found himself nervously mirroring the action.

“You told them it was my birthday,” Rusty said trying to act cross about it, he really didn’t want to celebrate it but feeling Brock rest his chin on his thinning red hair, catching him with his strong arms as he almost fell off his stool. He sighed contently, he didn’t care what he did, as long as he didn’t take that warm pressure away only he could give him.

“You’re acting stupid again, sometimes I just gotta remind you people care about you, you idiot.”

Rusty said nothing, tilting his head up and pulling Brock down enough to bring him into a kiss. They quickly pulled apart as the twins ran back in carrying a tray of sloppily frosted cupcakes. 

**Dean**

 

Rusty had been drinking an abysmal amount even by Rusty Venture standards. His liver was likely to give on him before the month was done and Rusty couldn’t find himself able to care. He wasn’t going down with a blaze of glory with a reputation for the history books but going down as the failure and joke he had been since his father decided he wanted to play god and create a child in a test tube.

Hank, his Hank, the presence that had always been here and he thought would always be here was gone. The only damn smart Venture if you asked Rusty.

Blurry eyes glanced down at his watch, it was midnight and more important then that, it was his birthday. He blew a raspberry at that realization and drank more vodka straight from the bottle. Some birth, if you could call being yanked out of a tube to be a test subject a birth and if you could call the constant state of pity he was in a life. 

He was forty-five, big whoop, who cared.

Don died his second death this year, he wasn’t here to care.

Johnny was in rehab and getting on with his life, there was no way he would want to come have pity sex with him and get drunk.

Pete was moving on to bigger and better things with Billy, wasn’t a snow ball’s chance he would be here shoving pastries and pot at Rusty.

Brock, he found himself crying, actually crying. The mere thought alone threw him full force back into his pity party for one. His head smacked against the toilet as he threw up his weight in liquor and choked on vile and sobs. Brock, his Brock, had chosen the OSI over him and there was no going back.

“Dad?”

He wanted to snap at Dean to go away and leave him to his pity party, let him drink himself into a coma right here on the bathroom floor, but he just didn’t have the energy to lift his head, let alone talk.

“You can’t drink like this,” Dean sounded so deflated, so done with everything, why couldn’t both his sons just wise up and leave? Why couldn’t he just wise up and leave? 

“Brock says they will commit you if you keep this up, if you end up in the hospital one more time because of self-inflicted injuries…”

It was really a miracle in negotiation on Brock’s part the way he smoothed everything over when Rusty had jumped out the window. Did he want to die when he did that? He didn’t remember anymore, he was always in a state of wanting to die, it was hard to tell what was a miscalculation and what really was a suicide attempt anymore with his recklessness. 

He felt Dean sink down next to him on the floor and effortlessly drag his dad up with him, slinging his arm around his shoulder as he dragged him back to bed.

He tried to push Dean away but he didn’t let him, climbing in bed with him and hugging him like he did when he was little and had a nightmare. Back when Rusty was a much better parent, before he started pushing his own kids away.

.

.

.

He woke up to vague memories of the night before, but he couldn’t remember anything solid. His pounding head told him to go back to sleep but the lack of Dean and the vague memory of Dean being here made him get up.

He found his son in the kitchen, he didn’t say anything to him, sitting down at the table watching him ice a cake he knew was for him.

“You were never the greatest dad and well you still aren’t.”

He didn’t stop Dean, if he wanted to call him a bad person, well he wasn’t wrong.

“But you are still my family, the only one I have left after everything…”

Rusty averted Dean’s eyes, they were both lost after Hank had left and neither were able to find him. There was just something missing without him and they both felt it.

“I want to start our relationship over again I guess,” Dean said hesitantly, “If you are willing to try. There is just so much we have in common…I know what grandpa did to you. Its not an excuse but it makes me understand you a little more. I want to actually know you dad.”

He sat a beautifully frosted cake in front of his father, in cursive it said “Happy Birthday Dad”.

Even more hesitantly he sat a wrapped gift in front of his dad, Rusty opened it frowning at the scrap book. Something Worth Living For was written in colorful cursive letters on the cover. With a shaking breath, Rusty opened the book and instantly his hand flew over his mouth to keep the sob from reaching his lips.

The very first picture was a restored photo of him and his uncle Don in their butterfly garden, the one only they went together. Rusty ran shaking fingers over his uncle's smiling face, he hadn't thought of him in over thirty years and he knew he would be so disappointed in if he found out he became just like Jonas.

Dean wrapped his arms around his dad and placed a kiss on his head as the tears slipped out.

It would take so much effort to mend their relationship after years of neglect but if Dean was willing to go to this much effort to try, Rusty figured he should as well.


End file.
